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This is a story of how to truly piss of Japanese people.
Some opportunistic loudmouth called Takashi Tachibana ran in the House of Councillors election for a single issue party he founded called The Party to Protect the People from NHK. Somehow he got elected. (thread)
Some opportunistic loudmouth called Takashi Tachibana ran in the House of Councillors election for a single issue party he founded called The Party to Protect the People from NHK. Somehow he got elected. (thread)
His whole platform is basically “I don’t like NHK (the national broadcaster) and I don’t want to pay the mandatory TV usage fee”. When asked about his positions on other issues, he says he has none.
He has received a disproportionate amount of publicity since the election by a bemused press. He has also managed to attract another elected politician to his party, one who was kicked out of the Liberal Democrats for saying Japan should go to war with Russia and other things.
(That guy, Hodaka Maruyama, has refused to resign, even though he has managed to shove both feet in his mouth repeatedly. He can’t be kicked out by law though.)
Back to Tachibana though. NHK, being the national public broadcaster, has given him coverage in their staid manner, even as he continues to call for boycotts of them while demanding a meeting with them at the same time.
On Monday, popular TV personality and commentator Matsuko Deluxe said some unflattering things about Tachibana on live TV show called Gojo ni Mucchuu, such as that some people probably voted for him a a joke.
So Tachibana promptly called for a boycott of the station that airs Goji ni Michu, Tokyo MX, and Matsuko. He also called for a boycott of Gojo no Muchuu’s sponsors. One of them is a Yokohama based company called Kiyoken, who makes siumai.
And this is where people stopped just laughing at him and got pissed. Kiyoken is a much loved institution in Yokohama, not to mention the whole greater Tokyo area. Their siumai bentos are a fixture, a tradition. How dare this bozo from Hokkaido diss our institutions?
The ultimate insult was that he called Kiyoken’s siumai “shu-mai”. That’s what you call supermarket level shumai dumplings. Kiyoken’s are called シウマイ siumai, as any civilized person knows. People promptly started posting pics of Kiyoken’s siumai and the legendary bentos.
So the lesson here: insulting broadcasters or celebrities will only get an eh in Japan. But don’t you dare insult our beloved local food institutions! The end.
Bonus 1: Asagi Shinbun runs a feature about Kiyoken’s siumai factory.
Bonus 2: Manga author Yuuto Akagi’s amazing illustration/diagram of a classic Kiyoken Siumai Bento.
*Asahi 🤬
(*of=off 🤬🙄)
(Correction: Matsuko Deluxe’s program is called Goji ni Muchuu 五時に夢中. Time to turn off autocorrect again 😩)
One more bonus: Kiyoken’s siumai sets (not their bentos unfortunately) come with ceramic soy sauce bottles which are a gourd shaped character called Hyo-chan. They double as chopstick rests. Yep they’re collectibles. 
A Kiyoken siumai set with a Hyo-chan soy sauce bottle
(One more correction 😖 Maruyama was kicked out of the Nippon Ishin no Kai, not the LDP.)
